


Close

by iris_impossible



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Asexual Jughead Jones, But not Aromantic, F/M, Fluff and Angst, How to Sex an Asexual, Sexuality is a Beautiful Spectrum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 20:46:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10647759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iris_impossible/pseuds/iris_impossible
Summary: Jughead always knew he was different. It was kind of hard to miss.





	Close

Jughead always knew he was different.

It was kind of hard to miss. His life wasn’t like his friends’ – with their houses surrounded by white picket fences and azalea bushes and their two car garages and their loving parents with their respectable jobs and shiny shoes – and he thought that was why he was different too. Like a fault line between two tectonic plates, the friction in his life opened up little cracks inside of him and sometimes those cracks threatened to widen into chasms that could swallow him up. This was at the root of his difference. This was why he’d built a wall around himself brick by painful brick, why he didn’t just assume things would work out for the best, why his skin always felt like it was stretched just a little too tightly over his bones.

He was sure those cracks were why he couldn’t connect with people, not in the way he wanted to. Even Archie, the person he also said he was the closest to in the world, felt so often beyond his reach. Had he done that on purpose? Chosen someone so self-involved and oblivious as his best friend because, despite his secret yearning for a brother or confidante or soulmate, he didn’t really _want_ to be close to anyone?

See? Cracked. Damaged. Different.

Jughead had grown up vividly, painfully aware of all the things that had made him different except for one. When the other boys in school started to talk about girls – _God she’s so hot, I would to bang her so hard_ – he always assumed they were… joking, somehow. Exaggerating, because teen movies had taught them that they were supposed to be nothing but walking hormones at this age and they were trying to play the part.

It took him years to realize that wasn’t the case. Slowly it dawned on him that others weren’t just putting on a show – they really felt that way – and it was like shift in gravity. He was more different than he’d ever imagined; he was an alien walking the surface of the earth. There was this undercurrent in the world that he’d never known was there. Everyone around him was speaking this language of _sex_ , and not only did he not understand it, he couldn’t even hear anyone talking.

When he lay in bed late at night, staring up at the ceiling, he wasn’t thinking about what Archie or Reggie or anyone else he knew was thinking about. The empty ache that kept him up wasn’t in his shorts; it was under his solar plexus and in the back of his throat. He was imagining fingers knitted with his own, someone pushing the hair back from his face and telling him they weren’t going anywhere. _That’s_ what he was thirsty for and what he was so scared – and so sure now, more than ever – he would never find. Because who’d want him this way, on top of everything else? Who would he ever be able to be close to when he couldn’t speak the same language everyone else did?

As it turned out, the answer was Betty.

Betty didn’t mind his differences. Liked them, even. When the cracks inside of him started to open up and he was on the verge of falling, she was there, reaching a hand across to him and pulling him safely to the stable ground on the other side. At her side.

When she kissed him, he didn’t feel that stirring below the belt that everyone said he was supposed to, but her lips were always warm and soft and when her breath ghosted over his skin, she felt _close_. He would hold her tight, trying to obliterate the space between them, until he could feel her chest rising and falling and her heart racing and the funny hiccuping sound she made sometimes when he raked his fingertips into her silky hair.

What was some fire in the blood, some reflexive evolutionary response to ensure the propagation of the species, compared to this?

He didn’t need anything from her but to be with her, but he liked the way she needed him sometimes. How her kisses would turn desperate and searching and she would whisper _please_ against his lips. Like the night they’d found out the truth about what happened to Jason. Betty was quaking all over and he kept his body rigid as he held her, trying to be a place of stillness for her. Her kisses were somehow gentle and fierce at the same time, just like her, and she reached under his t-shirt, her fingers leaving fiery, tingly trails across his skin.

“Can I…?” she asked. He nodded, and she pulled his shirt off over his head. Hers followed, then his jeans and her skirt, and soon they were naked, skin pressed to skin the whole length of their bodies, nothing between them. They laid down together, and it was weird, because this was a naked girl in his bed, but also not weird because this was _Betty_.

She brushed her fingers across his jaw. “Tell me when you want to stop.”

He kissed her forehead and her eyelids and the shell of her ear. He kissed his way down the tendons on the side of her neck and along her ribs, to the dark port-wine birthmark under her left breast that he’d never known she had. When his fingers brushed it, she squirmed.

“I hate it,” she said. “It’s so ugly. I could never wear a two-piece swimsuit because of it.”

That’s when his chest got tight. Not because he was looking at Betty’s naked body, but because she was _letting_ him. She trusted him to see all the sweet imperfections she usually tried so hard to hide.

He kissed the birthmark and the thin white appendectomy scar across her stomach and the dimples on her thighs. Her breath came faster, and when he touched her carefully, her gasps and sighs made him feel… powerful. _Privileged_ , that he was the one to dismantle all of her carefully cultivated control.

She pushed him back onto the bed, rolling him onto she was on top, her slim legs between own. He banged his elbow on her bedside table in the process and they laughed. It wasn’t like the movies. It was awkward and sweaty and uncomfortable, but it was them, so it was okay.

“We don’t have to,” she said between kisses.

“I know,” he said. “I want to.”

He wanted her to have whatever she wanted. And he wanted _her_. Not her body but her whole self, and when she slowly took him inside of her, his heart rocketed up into his throat. There was some physical pleasure to it, sure – he might have been different but he still had functional nerve-endings – but what started the coiling feeling in gut was the _closeness_. There was no way in this life to be closer to a person than this. She was looking into his eyes, and it felt like she was looking right into the depths of him, into the dark corners where he hid his worst fears and dearest hopes. Overwhelmed, he closed his eyes.

“Too much?” she whispered.

“No,” he said.

“Then look at me.”

He opened his eyes again, and there she was. She stroked his cheek and whispered his name, and when she started to move slowly above him again, her big doe-eyes never left his, and they were as warm and soft and sustaining as freshly baked bread.

“I love you,” he said softly.

“I love _you_ ,” she said.

He swept the hair away from her face so he could see her better. She was all flushed skin and pale hair and soft, curving flesh, like a vision from a Titian painting. She caught his hand and drew it to her mouth to kiss his palm.

“…close…” she whispered against his skin.

 _Close_ , he thought, and he didn’t take his eyes off of hers.

When it was over, she was trembling again and clung to him like he was the only thing keeping her from falling. He knew how she felt, so when she laid her head on his chest, he held her tight. They were safe from cracks and chasms here, now. She twined her fingers with his and rested their joined hands over his heart, and before he fell asleep he heard her whisper.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

 


End file.
